


Not

by HermitLibrary_Archivist



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cally POV, Dubious Consent, F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-05-26
Updated: 2008-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:31:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4885549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermitLibrary_Archivist/pseuds/HermitLibrary_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>by Zelda</p><p>In "Hostage", Cally decides to tell Jenna that Avon has contacted Servalan. Various uncanonical events ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Judith and Aralias, the archivists: This story was originally archived at [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Hermit_Library), which was closed due to maintenance costs and lack of time. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2015. We posted announcements about the move and emailed authors as we imported, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hermitlibrary/profile). 
> 
> This work has been backdated to 26th of May 2008, which is the last date the Hermit.org archive was updated, not the date this fic was written. In some cases, fics can be dated more precisely by searching for the zine they were originally published in on [Fanlore](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page).
> 
> **Original Author's Notes:**
> 
> Previously published in the Freedom City mailing list.

It hit me hard, and absolutely unexpected--I had been so long among them. It was like a flash of light, so bright that the afterimage lingered, practically opaque.

It wasn't actually light, of course; it wasn't my eyes shocked and blinded after so long in the dark. But there is no more appropriate simile.

We were in stationary orbit above the planet, Exbar, and Blake had just left for the teleport area. I was still standing at my station, for no particular purpose, force of habit.

It hit, and was past, in an instant. Then for perhaps a second afterwards I could sense him, in my head, perfectly clear. IF SHE COMES. He thought. And I perceived. Not in words, of course, not the unspoken words I always use with them, when I feel the need to try and speak to them. Speak to the dark.

WHILE THEY ARE THERE - Avon thought. I turned toward him.

AND THEREFORE WE ARE HERE. Like a beacon, all was bright, his skull like glass. Just for a second. Like the touch of a hand, after so long, or perhaps it was more like a kiss.

WHAT IF SHE. Then the light, not light, the brief clarity, was gone. I was alone in my head again, as usual.

I turned back to my console, which seemed to have gone momentarily indecipherable. Who am I? What am I doing here? Groping blind.

"Cally, what's the matter?" Jenna asked me.

I looked at Avon. "No," I said. I shook my head. "I don't think it's important."

"Well, it might be," Jenna said. "You've been right before."

I stared down at the console. No, it's not important. Let it go, it's not--I took a deep breath. It _is_ important, I said to myself. I'm sorry, Avon, I thought. Not out loud.

I turned to Jenna. "He told Servalan," I said.

She looked confused, and Avon glared, wordlessly dared me to elaborate.

I did. "Avon sent Servalan a message, telling her where Travis was. Telling her that Travis was here."

It was sufficient. I watched her expression change, as comprehension dawned. "Blake!" she shouted, and abandoned her station, bolted toward the teleport bay after him.

Avon smiled. I wished I had the slightest idea what he was thinking now. What any of them were thinking. Odd, the things you don't notice until they're gone.

I hope that was the right choice, I thought to myself. I hope I have done the right thing.

***

Thirty-six hours later (last time I'd looked) overall it appeared that I had. Made the right decision, that is, in telling Jenna.

The mood on the flight deck was festive, even almost unequivocally victorious for once. Even though Blake kept saying they'd get another Supreme Commander, and surely a more competent one at that--well, as Vila put it, they hadn't yet. Servalan's body was still warm, or would be if (again, as Vila put it) you were to collect together all the pieces and bring them inside and put them somewhere warm. I suspect he'd begun celebrating ahead of time. But I was not motivated to lecture him on this particular glorious occasion. Regular celebrations are a human necessity. So, smile, drinks all around, and then all around again. No, thank you, I said. Come on, said Jenna, Zen can handle it, come on. Oh come on, Cally, just this once, said Vila, and just this once he was offering, not begging. He was pushing a glass toward me half full of that stuff they only bring out on special occasions, though it tastes neither better nor worse on my untrained tongue than the everyday drink.

Well, all right. In the name of team spirit I took the glass from Vila's hand, and drank its contents down, which took him by surprise.

So, in the end, only Avon abstained, even when pestered, from drinking, if not quite entirely from the festive atmosphere.

"Temperance," Vila said, when Avon waved away yet another beverage. "Deadliest of the seven deadly virtues." He rolled his eyes, and downed the rejected drink himself.

"I somehow doubt it's killed as many as faith, hope, and charity," Avon replied.

"Yes, but death by boredom, what a dreadful way to go," Vila said, rather wishing, I suspected, that his spiteful gods would overhear, and opt to give him that which he professed to most fear. Rather than, for instance, killing him in combat.

"I'd love to join in, but one of us has to keep his wits about him," Avon said. Not quite defensive. Jenna and Vila giggled raucously.

"All right, Avon," Jenna said, "if they pull us over, remember, you're the pilot. You and Orac'd be the only ones able to walk a straight line."

"And Zen, of course," said Vila.

"And the prisoner," I added. Really, I have no idea why. Even as I was saying it, I was thinking I'd rather not. It's not as though I enjoy causing trouble.

Jenna and Vila both stopped laughing, sudden as the flipping of a switch.

Blake looked up. "He's not a prisoner," he said, to me, to everyone present, articulating overcarefully. Avon looked at him. "Well, he's not," Blake said. "He agreed to let us take whatever steps were necessary to assure ourselves of his sincerity."

Avon continued to look at him, like that. Blake took a very deep breath, and then a drink.

"Have another, Cally," Vila suggested. "I think we could use it." I smiled at him and gratefully accepted.

Not a long time after that, Jenna, all uncharacteristically soft and sleepy, took me aside and suggested we take a stroll. "Just us," she said. Or in hindsight perhaps she said justice. She was slurring her words quite a lot by that time. A refreshing ramble down to the brig, I believe she said. She was laughing when she called it that, but the laugh was cold.

In fact it was a sleep room very much like several dozen others, except that this one could be locked and unlocked from the outside only. Avon had fixed it, had made very certain it worked. Just until we made sure.

"Sleeping like a baby," Jenna said, as she opened the door to that room, her brig.

"I don't think he's sleeping," I replied. Diplomatically. He was quite obviously awake, but then Jenna's observational skills at the moment were quite obviously not all they could be.

"Sit up," Jenna said to him, and he did. His head hung down. She grinned at me as though she had performed a magic trick. All on her own, far more clever than any of mine.

"We have a few more questions we forgot to ask you earlier," she said to him. "First, please identify yourself."

"Travis," he said. And seemed as though he wanted to say more, but there was no more, no rank, no number. Jenna smiled.

I felt I really ought to leave.

"Tell us, Travis, did you ever fuck a mutoid?" Jenna asked. Now she sounded like herself again. I looked at her. The soft sleepiness had melted off her, as it always does after a while, and always this clean metallic malice underneath.

He moved his head a bit. "Yes."

"How was it? I mean, how was it for you?" This was Jenna unadorned by even her customary cool vague pleasantness.

"Fine," he said.

"I've heard they're modified to enhance their sexual performance. Is that true?"

"I don't think so." He paused, thinking, wanting to say more, eager to please. "They'll do whatever you tell them to. I suppose that's an enhancement."

Jenna looked at me. I could not interpret her expression. It seemed she expected me to react, but I didn't know to what, so I didn't know how. "Don't you want to ask him anything?" she said. "I thought you, in particular--" She made a face that must mean something, the unspoken must be clear, but as I have said, I was feeling foggy.

She glanced away from me, glared at Travis. His eye had closed again. "We aren't finished questioning you, Travis," she snapped. "Stand up. Come to attention."

He did. Swayed. His hands were still bound behind him. If he falls, I thought, he might hurt himself. He might not be fit to catch himself. His head fell slowly forward, down to his chest. Falling asleep on his feet. All in all he didn't look too good, even considering he'd been administered a potentially fatal interrogation drug rather heavy-handedly. The stuff Jenna found in the room with the corpse, that day, the day Gan died. The day we left Earth without Gan, left Gan, they left Gan, left Gan for dead.

Is he?

Travis bent his head up toward me, his eye still closed, or almost, and his face blank. "Yes," he said.

Unexpected. I must either have thought the question out loud, inadvertently, or spoken without realizing that I had. Either way it was a clear sign that I ought to get some sleep.

"How did Gan die?" I said his name out loud this time for certain. Jenna stared at me.

"Roof fell on him," Travis said, quiet. "Head trauma, I suppose. I don't know." Nor care. Quiet and calm.

Jenna hit him. No. I shook my head. She couldn't have hit him. We were both still well out of his reach. Shook my head again. My mind was blurred by two more shots of adrenaline and soma than the none I'm accustomed to, and--he is hated. He is so _intensely_ hated. The hate here was an intoxication in and of itself.

He is an animal in a cage, I said to myself. Something with a reputation, dangerous, poisonous, something that has shown itself to have a taste for blood. Has killed, but has been caught, and is now locked safely in a cage. And we, Jenna and I, we are children with sticks.

"Did you ever fuck the Supreme Commander?" Jenna asked.

He looked straight at her, his dead eye wide. "No," he said.

Jenna smiled. "Did you want to?"

"No," Travis answered, straightaway.

Jenna seemed momentarily disappointed, but she recovered rapidly. "That's good," she said to him. "She's dead now, your Supreme Commander. So you wouldn't be able to."

Travis said nothing. All right, let's leave him alone now, I thought to myself, but I stayed.

"Aren't you glad she's dead?" Jenna asked.

I stayed. I ought to have left, I ought to have gone and got some sleep. I needed sleep badly. I should have refused to be her audience.

"No," he said.

I stayed, and stared in at him as he answered her questions. We are children with sticks, I said to myself. She and I, and he is in our cage.

"I'll be sure and inform Blake of your feelings on this matter," Jenna said.

And there is, I thought to myself, there is something animal in his eye, something sharp and bright and flat and feral. There is something inhuman about him.

"All right," he said.

Something alien.

Jenna stepped forward, moved closer to him. "Did you ever rape anyone?" she asked.

I sighed, very vocally. "What does it matter?" I asked her. Cut off his answer. "Why do you want to know? I don't. In any case surely he's done worse. He's--" Cold like oxygen turned to ice her brush of emotion against me. I stepped away from her, reflexively, so she had to realize I had seen inside her. That's why she hates me, that's one of the reasons she hates me. Me and my tricks, which she knows are better than hers.

She smiled at me, in a way that made me want to hit her, just for a fraction of a second, the concept damped before it could propagate beyond the privacy of my mind.

Then she turned back to Travis. "Well, did you?" she asked him.

"I don't think so," he said.

Jenna looked dubious.

Not physically, I said to myself.

"Not physically," he echoed, out loud. Then fixed his eye on Jenna's face. "Have you?"

At that point, finally, I walked away from it. Left the two of them together. I was not, had never been, a part of it.

I was kind enough not to lock the door behind me.

I went to my cabin. The moondisk moved away from me when I put my hand near, until I forced myself to think comforting babble, mindless whitenoise thoughts. Which as always made me feel better as well. Two of a kind, this endangered toxic vegetable and me. Avon might say. No. Avon might think, but not say, and regret yet another good line wasted. Wasted on me.

When I was calm enough that the moondisk came happily to the shadow of my hand, I lay down, and was able to sleep for a while. Dream of nothing, warm beautiful nothing. There is a dimension, curled up, out of sight, around the corner, and in it everybody understands, everybody speaks the common language. There is none of this frustrating neverending miscommunication. There are none of these words.

***

Jenna did not look well the next shift, when she came to take over for me. Avon, who apparently had not left the flight deck since before the celebration, did not seem particularly sympathetic toward her plight.

I found Blake in the galley, looking nervous. Maybe he was waiting for me. For someone, or anyone. "No reason not to let him out of his cabin now, I suppose," he said. "Unless you have any objection?" He sounded so hopeful.

I smiled at him. "None you don't share, I'm sure."

Blake stared down into the depths of his vitamin drink. "I thought you might--"

"You think perhaps there's a question that we never thought to ask, and the honest answer would give you sufficient cause to kill him."

"Point taken," he said.

"You could let him go."

He laughed, softly. "No objection, then."

"I'll show him the wardrobe," I offered. "I'll show him whatever you think he should be shown."

"That would be very helpful, Cally, thank you," said Blake. Who accepted Travis' presence in concept, but had so far avoided going anywhere near him, since he was brought on board. Since Blake brought him on board.

"I apologize for calling you manipulative, Blake," Avon had said, at the time. "You really _are_ just plain mad."

And you're just plain treasonous, Avon. Blake didn't say. "Is the cabin ready?" The brig.

"Yes," Avon had said, and spared me a foul look as he prepared to lead them there. Yes, well, it had not been undeserved. I'd done him wrong, even though the result might be right. I had told Jenna, and Jenna had told Blake. And Blake had told Travis. Now Travis was here. Hands bound behind and two guns to his head, but it felt very dangerous nevertheless. I think we were all a bit surprised that Blake had really gone through with it.

I'm sure Blake was more surprised than any of us.

"You want to cooperate with us," Avon had said. "With Blake." Avon, our designated interrogator, calm and articulate.

"Yes."

"Why should Blake cooperate with you?" Avon had asked.

"I don't know," Blake said to me, here and now.

"Because it is bound to be easier than fighting. One less thing for you to fight." I patted his hand. Ate half my meal, talking with him about things that were not to the point, wishing desperately I could come up with an objection.

***

Travis looked even worse than Jenna had. He was lying on his side on the bunk when I opened the door, and there was a puddle of bright yellow vomit on the floor beneath his head. Those drugs do leave one with a hellish hangover. I know the feeling firsthand, and I suppose for that reason I felt quite kin to Avon in my lack of sympathy toward the prisoner, the former prisoner, as I undid his restraints. I watched him make a face as he flexed his wrists, watched him lurch toward the lavatory. "Drink plenty of water," I said as the door slid shut. "It will pass. When you're done in there, I'll take you to the wardrobe."

Then I sat on the bunk and stared sleepily at the puddle, at the restraints undone beside me, until he came out, and then we vacated the brig together.

"Pass, I've passed, have I?" he muttered as we walked side by side down the long corridor, as I pointed out examples of Avon's little unnecessarily complicated sticky-tape signs.

I thought of last night. "Yes, I suppose you have," I said. "Do you remember?"

There may be a little pain.

I ought to have stopped her.

He looked me in the eye, and shook his head. The details are lost, which is all for the best, I thought, but there's something that sticks. A faint bruise, you don't know where it came from. You never will. A dim fever dream, on a stranger's uncomfortable bed.

We came to the wardrobe. He didn't appear impressed. Bent over the console and perused the variety of patterns available. After several seconds he pushed a button, unenthusiastically. "You should have uniforms," he muttered.

"Why?" I smiled. "So you don't have to act as though you know how to use this machine?" I leaned in beside him and entered the proper sequence.

"So you can identify one another without having to think about it, without having to see each other's faces, you can know if the person twenty metres away is someone you want to shoot or not."

"We seem to have managed so far." Better than could have been expected.

He turned around and looked at me. "You've lost your edge," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Then, when we took you on Centero. You were a soldier, of sorts. You're not, you're nothing at all like a soldier now."

I folded my arms across my chest. "I suppose I grew out of it," I said. That, then, that was a long time ago.

He looked at me. I thought of all the truths I must have told them. Told him. I could vaguely remember more than enough of it. "Too bad I was on the wrong side," I said. Attempting humour.

He turned back to the console. Humour attempt unsuccessful. "Better to be a soldier on the wrong side than a civilian on the right."

I smiled. "Is that how you see yourself now? As a soldier on the wrong side?"

"Is that how you see yourself now?" he mocked, with his back still turned. "As a fucking therapist? There is no wrong side? Everything's relative?"

The anger in him. The ghost woman had said, lovingly. One of the nightmare women on that nightmare planet. That too was so long ago now, and nobody speaks of it--perhaps it _was_ a dream. Of mine, about him. I did not like to think that it was. The anger, the violence inside. If I reach out one finger now and touch him, I thought, touch him anywhere, his hand resting on the console, the back of his neck, any place on his bare burning skin, his hatred will arc, a psychic spark, and ground itself in me.

I kept my hands at my side.

"I still believe there is a wrong side," I said.

"I imagine you also still believe you are a soldier."

I would have liked to strike him.

The ready signal lit up, and the little door slid aside, revealing his new clothes. Very plain, from what I could see, and dark green or brown, the colours Blake had taken to wearing, although certainly not the style. And high brown boots.

"Well. There's your uniform," I said, as he took the jumpsuit out.

"Yes." He examined the new boots critically. "I think I'll keep my own," he muttered.

"You're welcome," I said, and turned and walked out of the room.

 

 

 


End file.
